


Memorial

by Lalaen



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Child Abuse, Cults, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Rituals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-06
Updated: 2015-08-06
Packaged: 2018-04-13 08:54:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4515696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lalaen/pseuds/Lalaen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Reiner reflects on what made these two broken boys so broken. Can easily stand alone. </p><p>For Reibert Week Day 5: Marks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memorial

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Fractured Whole](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3393581) by [Lalaen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lalaen/pseuds/Lalaen). 



> The backstory or prologue of sorts to The Fractured Whole. Also stands alone yep.

His body was marked up from head to toe, and Reiner knew the origins of every blemish and scar. His olive skin was spattered with beauty marks, from the one near the hollow of his throat to those on the tender skin of his inner thighs. Reiner always found them somehow sexy, somehow secret and intimate and something only between them. Those dark dots were points on the map of Bertholdt's body, landmarks on his topography. The silvered stretch marks on the small of his back were the battle scars of a rough puberty full of growing pains and sleepless nights in the years before the group home, sweat-damp sheets in a long parade of foster houses. He'd always come to find Reiner, he could never stay away even when they didn't share a room at wherever they were staying. 

Those were the most innocent of all his battle scars. Stretch marks were only a result of his height and his explosive growth spurts, a reminder of clothes he'd had to wear that were much too short in arm and leg. 

His left forearm was dotted with scars that had the stretched shine of old burns. They were souvenirs of the cult's conditioning. Reiner could remember all too well watching a woman holding Bertholdt's tiny arm in a vice grip over a lit candle. Her voice was full of conviction as she told him he could not flinch away, that his suffering was for the greater good and his pain meant nothing. 

_Your pain means something to me,_ Reiner would whisper as he tried to stop Bertholdt from compulsively picking his wounds. Maybe subconsciously, he wanted them to scar. Maybe he thought that would make them mean something. 

On the balls of his hands were more marks of his nervous compulsions. Small white scars showed where he'd chewed himself to bleeding. Reiner shared these, though for the life of him he did not know what had started the habit in either of them. In moments of extreme anxiety, Bertholdt could still be caught doing it. 

Across his stomach were thick slashes that had scarred big and ugly. Many a doctor who had treated them throughout their lives had assumed them self inflicted due to the location and neat, regular arrangement. The truth was a little harder to swallow, something even Reiner only believed because he lived it. 

The scars were owed to ritual bloodletting. Bertholdt, believed somehow to be the most 'pure' of what had originally been three little boys, was most often used for this purpose. He was trained not to react when he was brought up to the altar and mock-sacrificed by cuts not deep enough to actually disembowel him. He'd always been so pale and faint when Reiner saw him again, weak from blood loss and body in shock from pain his mind would only numbly acknowledge. 

There were so many more that were only permanent in Reiner's mind. He could never forget seeing that thin back beaten black and blue, feeling cracked ribs shift underneath his caring hands as they checked for deeper damage. The marks had long, long since faded, but Reiner told himself that as long as he remembered them, they would mean something. 

It was a tall order for him. His memory often failed - especially when it came to their childhood. He knew there were things only his other self remembered. He knew there were marks he had missed, wounds to that beloved body that he could not hold in his head and in his heart. 

Their greatest struggle was one he did not remember, and the guilt of it ate at him. Not just the memory of the wounds was lost, but the meaning of an entire life. The weight of knowing was left on Bertholdt alone. Reiner had only his matching scar, and the taunting knowledge of something he should remember. 

A raised line ran across the throat of both Reiner and Bertholdt; the only evidence of their friend that remained. It was the mark of some ritual performed with all three of them, a bloodletting that according to Bertholdt had gone very wrong. Only once had the story been recounted - the acolyte's hand slipping and the knife slicing deep, black arterial spray pumping from the wound. The panic in Berik's eyes as he tried to choke in breath. The blood that had poured from his lips. The messiah proclaiming frantically that this was a sign, the followers in shock. 

Reiner would not make Bertholdt tell it again, no matter how much he wished he remembered. 

He was used to seeing scratches and scrapes around Bertholdt's old wounds, where the skin would be rubbed raw from scratching and picking. Reiner wished he understood. He had his guesses - Bertholdt wanted to feel pain again, or simply that he was hyper aware of scars and it made his skin prickle. Reiner had never been sure, but he couldn't bring himself to make the man stop. He understood how it felt to have an itch, like how he searched in his mind for those secret parts he wasn't allowed to see. It made his head hurt with how hard he tried to grasp for those things he couldn't reach, the things he almost remembered.

He could remember Bertholdt's marks. He could be a memorial to the pain the man had not been allowed to feel or express. He would not let a single bruise fade. They made this man he so loved into who he was, made his suffering valid.

Reiner could not change the things that had happened to them, but he'd be damned if he let himself forget.


End file.
